Talking Tarzan with Phil Collins
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Initially the crew used reference points from the movie to create a song for Terk. One incarnation was conceived as a drag number where all of the apes stole dresses from the human camp and performed a torch song. “However that song fell by the way side like so many others,�? Phil answers. “Other songs that we eventually ditched included What Kind of Animal Does He Think We Are? that Terk sang about Tarzan and a fun number called I Rest My Case that was designed as a witness for the prosecution number where Terk sat all of the animals down with Tarzan in the witness box. I envisaged the scene to be a Charles Laughton-type performance with Terk in a flour wig like English court judges! The first song I wrote for the character was called I Don’t Think So and that got canned very early in the process.�?

“We were in rehearsals and I was about to go home to Switzerland for my son’s birthday and during a reading Chris Montan said that he felt we needed some musical energy in the second act from Terk. At that time we had I Believe in You and a reprise and I was planning on just replacing the reprise as I thought that number was going to stick,�? Phil continues. “It suddenly dawned on me that a Motown number would work as it always brings a smile to your face when you hear that rhythm. In fifteen minutes I came up with this chord sequence and played it to each of the production team individually. The consensus was that they liked it. So I got on the plane for Europe and thought about the piece some more. On the return leg I wrote the lyrics to the song. As I went to the rehearsal it almost felt as if I had slipped into some grainy black-and-white newsreel as I walked down the aisle, gave the music to the pianist Jim Abbott [who is also conductor of the Tarzan orchestra] with the instruction ‘You play it and I’ll sing it’. That is how I expected the whole process to unfold as if on Opening Night the director would hate a song, rip up the sheet music and you would have to write a new number then and there! It actually happened that time. The final song Who Better Than Me? was perfect for Chester [Gregory II] and the end result is that he sings the number in the first act with Young Tarzan and then reprises it with Josh [Strickland, Tarzan] in the second.�?

In all five songs return from the original movie soundtrack although each had segments that were cut from the movie reinstated for the musical numbers. Compositions like Strangers Like Me were continually tweaked during the creative process fluctuating with additional lines and subsequent curtailments. In addition Phil Collins has provided nine new tunes although he personally tallies the count as ten: “If you include Jungle Funk there are ten new melodies. As a drummer I regard that percussion piece as a song but Tom said to me ‘that theater goers won’t think of it as a song!’�? Phil jokes. “However it was a really tough number to compose as I had never created a harmony for dance. It was also difficult as choreographer Meryl Tankard lives in Sydney, I was in Geneva and the Disney folks were in New York! I needed an idea of what she was expecting for this scene and she couldn’t choreograph without music! So Meryl played me some numbers that she liked from other composers and we would constantly send material backwards and forwards as we tried to settle on a final arrangement. Trashin’ the Camp yielded a similar problem for me and it was actually the most complicated number to write in the movie. I had to ask the animators to tell me what the apes would be smashing! It seems so simple but I needed to know what objects they were drawing for the scene in order to create the rhythm that would become the groove. Jungle Funk became very fluid as Meryl would write back that she wanted the melody doubled in length and then Tom would say ‘In your dreams!’ and we would have to hone it down again. Meryl would come back saying can we have another four bars in this section and so on. It was an arduous process for me.�?

Many of the creative talents I had met that week in New York had indicated that the lengthy rehearsal process had been emotionally and physically draining as they spent six days a week and sixteen hours a day stuck together in the Navy yards in Brooklyn. However for Phil the process came at an appropriate time in his life. “I was in another personal crisis in my life with my marriage collapsing,�? Phil admits. “We began rehearsals on December 27 and on that first day as we gathered in Brooklyn Tom made everyone in the space stand up and explain who they were. I was the first chosen and just told the cast that if they didn’t like what I had written for them to come and talk to me about it. I was looking for friendship at the time and wanted to become part of the furniture so to be pushed so hard both creatively and emotionally was perfect for me. I never had time to think. It was a dark period for me but a lot of sunshine was provided by the cast and crew of Tarzan.�?